Non Non Biyori

Non Non Biyori: B

From Left to Right: Hotaru, Komari, Natsumi, Renge.

This is fanart, the actual art style is a little different.

Yeah, it's another slice of life show.  I needed something gentle and easy after Attack on Titan to bring my heart rate down.

The title is a pun on the words nonbiri, which means to be lazy or do nothing, and biyori which means weather.  It's yet another slice of life show, this time about elementary school and middle school girls rather than high school girls, and rather than being set in the middle of a big city, it's set in a very rural part of Japan, in fact, the four characters are the only students in their town's combined elementary and middle school, all of different years, a first-grader, Renge, a fifth-grader, Hotaru, a seventh-grader, Natsumi and her older sister, an eigth-grader, Komari.

I found it pretty funny, but really the best part of it for me was the first-grader.  Unlike a lot of other portrayals of very young characters, we are neither shown the world through her eyes (therefore missing much of the grown-up context) nor is her childish ignorance played for laughs, she's simply another member of the cast who's lived in their rural town for her whole life and is continually questioning whether or not they're all hicks.

Despite the framing device of Hotaru being a girl from Tokyo, she is just another cast member as well, with her own idiosyncrasies and confusions and obsessions, it's truly an ensemble show.

And you know, it made me laugh and tear up a little bit in a couple places.  And that's enough for me to give it a B.  Slice of Life shows that aren't boring or contrite usually get that from me and I kind of wish I could say more about it, but that's really all there is.

Non Non Biyori has some good schadenfreude, some good laughs at 'yeah, I remember being like that', some really heartwarming moments and is just a smooth, lazy ride on a day with good weather.  If you don't like slice of life shows, you won't like NNB, but if you do it's well-paced and funny with little to complain about.